


Stories Yet To Tell

by kiev4am



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Mention of most other main characters from around the late-Episode 8 mark, POV John Bridgens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 08:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15602193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiev4am/pseuds/kiev4am
Summary: There is a tale that James hasn't told yet.  Francis wants to hear it.  Perhaps, there's time.





	Stories Yet To Tell

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a collision between my need to imagine a looking-glass version of that agonising scene in Episode 9 and my more frivolous regret that we never got to see James tell the one about the cheetah.  Along the way it turned into a generalised hymn to recovery and fellowship, and I'm fine with that.
> 
> I'm not sure if there's any realistic scenario whereby the boat-haulers on King William Island could be rescued en masse, but the tissue of circumstance I'm using here is that the Tuunbaq attacked the camp just after Hickey was hanged instead of just before, and without his impetus the mutiny never happened; the Fairholme sledge party made it to Fort Resolution and brought rescuers back; these rescuers somehow knew which part of the island to search and got to them before anyone else died; Silna persuaded her own people to help as far as they were able; and the Tuunbaq finally wearied of eating toxic industrialised Western souls and was happier for it.

The voice of the camp has changed.  Even now, two weeks later, John Bridgens will pause in his work and close his eyes to listen in rapturous, half-afraid wonder.  For so long each of their small sounds had been a little death, lost in the white land's vast indifference, mocked by the strange, tinny chant of the shifting stones; shrunken by loneliness, each scrape of sledge, each shuffling footstep or gasp of breath would crack shockingly loud and then instantly crumple, ground to nothing by infinities of silence.  The place was a nautilus, an endless coil of rock and ice and bitter air bounded by pearlescent, pitiless sunlight, and through its chambers they'd walked stiff as shades, leaving not even echoes behind.

Now the sound is different, transfigured beyond all imagining by more men, more tents, more raw, simple hope than John can find it in himself to measure.  The teams from Fort Resolution have meshed well with the straggling Terrors and Erebuses - sharing meals and blankets, medicines and jokes, some of them clearly awed by the experience, gazing into the wan, starveling faces of John's crewmates as if they were forgotten saints or pilgrims.  One day soon, they may have the strength and distance to accept that a heroes' welcome lies ahead of them in England and that, against all odds, they have ascended into myth without becoming grotesque, cautionary ghosts.  For now, the taste of wholesome food, the warmth and kindness of their rescuers and the chance to stop and sleep without inviting death is all any man among them requires.  And the voice of the camp, its ragged conglomerate  _living_ voice, rises up against the pallid sky like a tear-filled laugh, like a shaking cheer, like a raucous impossible song.

He knows that it is not a dream; but sometimes within the bleached, sagging frame of an infirmary tent, still hearing the catch and rasp of sick men's breaths, still crowded by the same displaced, desolate jumble of genteel oddments they had dragged here, step by bloody step, in harness - inkstands, silverware, shaving mirrors, teacups and books and varnished tables - he has felt the other time too close, jutting like bone through tender skin, and has had to step outside to show himself that what he hears is real.

But then, John thinks, it is always quieter by the sick bay tents; it's right that death should feel a little nearer.  There are still men seriously ill among the expedition.  All may recover, given time and nourishment, but much of both is still required and they will not be moving yet.  There is time, their saviours say.  They have seal and game in modest rations, Olympian feasts and banquets to the men of Franklin's crews; the hunters from the fort, clearly no strangers to such alliances, have banded with the small group of Esquimaux that came over the ridge towards them in that first astonishing week after the rescue mission found them, Lady Silence -  _Silna_ , Goodsir says - walking at their head like the ambassador she was.  Quiet and austere, wrapped in secrets, but her eyes had seemed to shine when she reached them and saw Goodsir standing diffidently at the Captain's shoulder.  Slowly and deliberately, Crozier had bowed to her; they'd looked at each other, almost but not quite smiling, and then both nodded:  two worlds meeting, two captains saluting on neutral ground.  Now, some crewmen and a few Marines have joined the hunting parties.  Sometimes they walk with the fur-clad men and women, or sit beside them, craning to watch and imitate how they prepare the speared seals; among the new, swelling sounds of the camp now lie halting words of Inuktitut spoken with English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish accents.  Hodgson makes particular efforts, as does Tozer (quietly pardoned after a long, abject confession to the Captain):  their eyes downcast, their faces haunted even as they nod their understanding, hands working carefully on the seal carcasses.  Neither man carries a gun, now.

Thus they abide, the last of Franklin's shattered lost-and-found expedition:  exhausted and overwhelmed, resting and eating, reaching out gratefully for every meagre comfort. And waiting, above all waiting, for their remaining sick to gain the strength to finish the long march out.

There are three infirmary tents, two large, one small.  In one lie William Gibson, Thomas Jopson, and Henry - wax-pale, scarred and sunken but alert, taking in water and broth and meat, their bodies inching back, day on day, from dissolution.  Gibson is mostly quiet, his face pained by more than the scurvy.  Jopson has recovered his soft sly humour; though he cannot sit up and his voice is rusty yet, he coaxes the majority of Crozier's few smiles.  And Henry is already taking small, assisted steps around the tent, requesting books and pencils and paper, his eyes tired but indomitably bright.  John stays with him as much as he is able.  Here at the ends of the earth, he no longer cares much who observes him when he holds Henry's hand, when he brushes the side of his face with cold fingers or leans fractionally closer to receive the same from him; no man remarks on it.  The second large tent is empty but for Henry Le Vesconte, now that Henry Collins and Thomas Blanky are both discharged; Le Vesconte, now hale enough to grumble at the forced bed rest, is likely to follow them tomorrow.  Collins is still hollow-eyed, twitching at any sharp sound; but he is steadying, as if his dread has climbed its final precipice and, with nowhere else to go, tumbled over.  He has, after all, stared death in its ravenous, roaring face and walked away - if only thanks to Commander Fitzjames' fierce rockets.  And Blanky has recovered from his further amputation with a stubborn, grinning resilience that shocks all but his former shipmates.  He has carved a memorial pipe from a remnant of his old leg and smokes it with every sign of relish; his new leg is an unwieldy thing, a rough prop until he reaches England's specialists, and so he mainly does without it, swinging among the tents on a pair of crutches.  He is increasingly nimble at it.  Just yesterday John heard him challenge Crozier to a race, bellowing across the camp, jolting from their leader his first audible laugh in days.

The cause of the Captain's bleak solemnity lies in the last and smallest tent:  worn to the bone, thin as a sledge runner, unconscious.  Stricken with a livid, spiteful fever that had sprung its claws just as his old wounds had at last begun to close, James Fitzjames burns and twists insensibly in his cot, blood seeping through his bandages, wrestling with oblivion under the grave attentions of three doctors.  In delirium Fitzjames slips between times, forgetting the rescue has happened; he mumbles desperately about the boats, the food, the creature, or curses Hickey and Goldner and the Admiralty itself with slurred, feeble rage.  Sometimes no words come and he weeps instead; and on at least one terrible occasion he has clung to Crozier's hand, voice parched, eyes darkly pleading, offering final sacrifice for a hell they have already escaped.   _My body... use it... feed the men..._   John remembers, and wishes he did not.  In the last few days, he thinks, every able-bodied man of the expedition must have ventured to the little tent to ask for news or pay respects.  It is cruel and it is wretched, but it is also hideously familiar - more homely to them, in its brutal fashion, than all the humble joys of recent days.  That one of their number should remain pitifully ailing at the very brink of reprieve, a grain of agony under the crew's frail shell, the spectre at the feast:  the intimate annihilations of the long boat-haul have taught them to expect exactly this reversal.

With Goodsir assisted by physicians from the fort, there is strictly little need for John in sick bay.  But he has immense respect for the unassuming surgeon and Goodsir trusts him in return, and while Henry recovers there is nowhere else that John would rather be; and so by agreement he divides his duties between the main sick tent, which eases his heart, and the smaller one, which at times threatens to break it.

Now he walks the short distance to the low dun-coloured tent, casting an eye across the camp as he goes.  It's early evening, the light still pale but a touch gentler, cooking fires springing up before tents of both canvas and hide.  Somewhere he hears singing, a bark of laughter.  Two Esquimaux pass him and he nods deferentially; Hartnell smiles up from the gun he is cleaning; Edward Little raises a hand to greet him as he makes his rounds among the groups of men.  No sign of Crozier, but that does not surprise him; he knows where the Captain will be.  Doctor Phipps emerges from the tent as he nears it, drying his hands on a cloth.  His face is sombre, but then it always is.

"How does he fare, sir?"

Phipps shakes his head.  "No worse and no better.  His fever  _may_ be lessening, but that's comparing a hot coal to a tea-kettle.  He's still too weak to take more than a few sips of broth."

"Has he spoken?"

"Not coherently."  The man sighs.  "The hell of it is, what little strength we could get back into him all went on knitting up those blasted wounds.  He's got nothing left to rally with - it doesn't have to worsen, it only has to wait him out.  He'll wake to lucidity, or he won't. It's a coin toss."

"What can I do?" John says quietly.

"Just carry on, if you would - keep him cool, offer water and broth, continue the draughts for the pain.  I've checked his dressings, they're all right."  Phipps looks over his shoulder and lowers his voice.  "Try to get  _him_ to rest, too."

John nods wordlessly, and they part.  He waits for a moment by the tent-flap, hearing the creak of the chair, the splash of water in a basin; then he ducks inside.

Light stabs the eyes of fevered men, and so the only illumination is a shaded lantern at the bedside.  In the dim space its soft yellow light makes a Rembrandt of the tableau before him, gifting a scant few shapes with warmth while the rest lie in musty shadow.  Fitzjames is still as stone, stretched beneath the blankets like the sculpture on a Gothic tomb; his face is gaunt, harshly lined but no less beautiful.  Against the broad white bandages his skin looks grey, and above their wrappings his collarbones rise stark as blades, the lift and sink of his chest so shallow John can scarcely see it.  On the table by the medicines lies a tiny boat, ingeniously carved from bone or stone, a mastless but clear effigy of  _Erebus_ or  _Terror_.  John had been there when Silna had slipped into the tent, holding the ship in her hand; she'd stood silently at the cot, regarding Fitzjames' spasms with her sad unflinching eyes, and then stooped quickly, tucking the little vessel with great care into the blankets by his shoulder.

Crozier sits close, in his shirtsleeves, dabbing Fitzjames' hairline with a washcloth; his hand is steady and infinitely gentle, and his expression as he gazes at his friend's face makes John want to retreat.  But it's too late.  When he startles, John feels every inch of the distance Crozier travels to come back to this moment.  His blue eyes contain expanses, like the ice.

"John."  The Captain's voice is gravelly but he dredges up a wry, weary smile.  "Have you been sent in to tell me I should rest?"

John smiles back.  "I was tasked with that indeed, sir.  But I'll spare you the fruitless repetition."  Three months ago, the notion of speaking so freely to a man of Crozier's station would have been unthinkable.  But the long march has levelled them, closed all distances of rank and birth, and Crozier as yet shows no appetite for restoring them.  John moves towards the cot.  "How is he?" he asks, although he knows.

Crozier's sigh is like the dragging of an anchor.  "Phipps thinks the fever's less.  I can't tell, John.  He hasn’t so much as coughed this past hour."

John lays the back of his hand to Fitzjames' forehead and finds the doctor's coal-kettle comparison is accurate.  Fitzjames' breath catches at the contact, but he does not wake.  "He may be a trifle cooler, sir."

Crozier is silent.  His whole face seems to sag from the eyes downwards, his jaw held at its authoritative angle by dogged habit alone.  He resumes his work with the washcloth, smoothing Fitzjames' sweat-dishevelled hair.  "At least… at least there seems to be no pain," he says at last.

John looks at Fitzjames' shuttered eyes, his peaceful face - so wrong, so  _dull_ , so lacking in the man's accustomed flair and steel - and remembers his own conflicted relief, days back, when Henry thrashed and cried out in his sleep; there is a point, for those who watch, where signs of death and signs of life bleed hopelessly together.  He leans down, searching the bandages for stains, searching his mind for something adequate to say.  "Doctor Phipps has checked his injuries, sir, as I did earlier.  The bullet wounds  _are_ mending, and the lacerations are all but gone."

Crozier goes very still.  "Lacerations?" he says softly.

John is not an inexperienced or a timid man; despite the sudden blaze of Crozier's stare he pauses, and considers.  Firstly, he considers whether it is truly possible that Crozier has not been party to a detail all the doctors have discussed at one time or another; secondly, he considers the fact that nothing on sea or land or on the savage ice between is more formidable than a captain learning that information he views as important has not been shared with him.  Then he holds fast, and speaks plainly.

"There were gashes on his right shoulder, sir.  But they were much less serious than the gun wounds, and they have closed without infection."

"The attack..."  Crozier's face is pale with shock and calculation.  "He was wounded by the creature, and did not say so?   _How_ could we miss that?"

" _No_ , sir.  Not the creature.  These are old wounds, like the gunshot.  Although Doctor Goodsir is of the opinion that they  _are_ animal in origin."  Crozier is frowning at him now in utter bafflement.  "Bites or claw marks, nothing half so large as the beast here on the ice.  He thought perhaps a wolf, or wild dog - "

He stops.  The sound is so small and dry - and so nonsensical - that for an instant it defies recognition.  He and Crozier look at each other; and then down, in disbelief.  Fitzjames' eyes are closed, but his throat works convulsively.  He swallows once, twice, clenches his teeth as if battling his own reflexes; and as the word scrapes out again they see the thinnest imaginable gleam beneath each flickering eyelid.

"Cheetah," he croaks.  "Was a.   _Cheetah_."

The effort drops him into the pillow, eyes fallen shut.  But it's as if the world has spun.  For one piercing moment Crozier's expression is so unschooled and open that John must look away, feeling he has trespassed onto sacred, private ground.  He knows that look; he has seen it, he has worn it; most recently four days ago when Goodsir had told him that Henry was definitely out of danger, and Henry had cocked his head at him from the snarled mess of his blankets and  _grinned_.

" _James_."

The name is barely a whisper, but the scarecrow figure in the bed turns instantly towards it.  The gleam in the hooded eyes cracks infinitesimally wider; a tooth flashes, the chapped and bleeding ghost of a once-roguish smile.  "Hello, Francis."  His voice is no more than sandpaper and wishing but it outdoes Crozier, who cannot speak at all.  There's nothing then but silence and their faces; John would back away if he were able, but the emotions in that moment have their own profound magnetics and he does not dare disturb them.  At long last Fitzjames blinks, his bleary gaze roving up to John, the tent.  "I dreamed," he gasps. "Rescue - "

"Yes - "  The Captain's voice founders on a sob.  Lamplight chases a bright thread down his face.  "You're safe, James.   _Safe_."

Fitzjames' face crumples, but he does not look away.  With a strain that almost closes his eyes he lifts his fingers a hair's-breadth from the blanket; Crozier catches the gesture like a flung stone, scooping the emaciated hand in both of his.  They fold together with such grace and inevitability, and John wonders if they know yet - what it is, what is so plain for him to see.  Discreetly he takes on the practicalities - pours water into a tin cup, tilts Fitzjames' head so he can drink a few mouthfuls, soaks the washcloth to further cool his face and throat:  all this achieved, as far as John can see, without a moment's interruption in the look the two are sharing, or the slightest loosening of their handclasp.  All that changes is the Captain's expression, edging slowly but irrepressibly towards humour.

"A  _cheetah?_ " he says at last. His reward is a rattling chuckle from the bed.  Crozier's eyebrows lift, his accent broadening as he attempts a hectoring tone - entirely undermined by the crack in his voice.  "And in what godforsaken wilderness exploit, James, did you manage to run afoul of a  _cheetah?_ "

Fitzjames squints up at him.  There is glee in his ravaged smile.  "No wilderness," he says hoarsely.  "Deck of the  _Clio_.  It was a pet.  Our… mascot."

"A cheetah for a ship's cat?"  Crozier's face is admirably straight.  "Most people would have settled for a tabby, James."  Fitzjames' helpless, wheezing laugh becomes a hiss of pain, and the Captain curses.  Fitzjames shakes his head in reassurance, still biting down a smile, but Crozier looks stricken.  "John - ?"

"Sir, if I may..."  John reaches past him to the table, retrieves the green glass bottle and the spoon beside it.  "This will help the pain a little," he tells Fitzjames.

His patient eyes the bottle.  "Will I sleep?"

"It can have that effect, sir."

"In that case... no, John.  I've slept… enough.  But… more water, if you please."  John proffers it and Fitzjames slumps back, his gaze returning thoughtfully to Crozier.  There's a sigh of effort as he moves his bandaged arm, dragging it up across the bed until his free hand knocks clumsily against their joined ones.  "I liked him," he murmurs.  "The cheetah."  With a stretch, he reaches Crozier's nearest knuckle with one finger.  His eyes are dark and steady and shining, resting on his friend's face; his voice, though scratched to breaking, holds the spark of something very much like devilment.  "He was a… surly creature.  No longer young, and prone to… moods.  But I found him rather stately, all the same."  His finger brushes weak circles on the heel of Crozier's hand.  "Noble," he whispers, distinctly.

Crozier's eyes widen as he catches the double meaning in the teasing words. He snorts; but his thumb moves back and forth on Fitzjames' bony wrist as if it cannot stop.  "Not so noble he didn't take a swipe at you," he says gruffly. He is no more speaking of a cheetah now than Fitzjames was, John is sure.

Fitzjames grins then in earnest, wide and crooked and unrepentant. It's like sunrise - a broken and defiant sunrise after weeks of Arctic darkness. His shadowed eyes dance with mischief. "I may possibly… have provoked him."

"Oh, possibly?"

"Just possibly."

Crozier leans forward, resettling his grip more securely on Fitzjames' hand. "James Fitzjames," he says - the name drawn out, slow and ceremonious, wholly belying the mock harangue that comes directly after. "Do you mean to tell me there exists a story about you keeping a _cheetah_ as a pet on board one of Her Majesty's ships - and being mauled by said creature, entirely predictably I may add - and yet, in all those deadly wardroom dinners we have sat through, you never _once_ saw fit to tell this story?"

Fitzjames laughs, low. "Didn't reflect so well on me as the one about the rockets. Not… _gilded_ … enough."

The way he rolls the second-last word has some meaning for them both, for Crozier's brows flinch together and his grin breaks, just for a moment. "Well, _I_ find it quite gilded enough for present circumstances," he says, very softly. "And so, once you've rested and taken some proper food - which I promise you will not come out of a tin - I'd be obliged if you would tell it to me, James. With precisely as many embellishments and absurd exaggerations as you see fit to add."

Sunk in the bedclothes, Fitzjames musters a look of injury that would not fool a small child. "How can you, Francis," he mumbles loftily. "I _never_ exaggerate."

As the import of the last few minutes hits him, John finds himself struggling to pull his own face into a semblance of stewardly decorum. Then he decides that decorum can be damned, leans down impulsively and clasps Fitzjames' shoulder. "I'll go and tell the doctors that you've woken, sir. And I'll see about getting you something to eat." Crozier nods at him in silent thanks, his eyes glinting with renewed life. He turns back to Fitzjames as soon as the tent-flap opens, and John starts the walk back to the main sick tent with no inclination whatsoever to check the spring in his step or the grin spreading over his face like a signal fire. Blanky sees him, smoking on an upturned box beside his tent; his eyebrows hoist in question and John lets his broadening grin be the answer, moves on with the sound of Blanky's wild whoop echoing behind him. Hartnell, Silna, Little; one by one he passes them, smiling until his face hurts, watching their faces reflect the thing in all their separate ways, to be seen by others and then again others, radiating across the camp like a held breath letting go in tense degrees.

They may have pain and shame and terrible dreams to come, he knows; recovery is slow, and never certain at the best of times. But the last man in their fragile, harrowed brotherhood is still with them; he is mending; he is not alone. It's enough, and more than enough. John will go to Goodsir. He will share the news, and watch the doctor's dawning smile, and do whatever else he may be asked to do to help. And then he will go and sit with Henry; and when the first chance presents itself, he thinks that he will kiss his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> *deep breath* This is the first fanwork I've written in three years and the first I've written in this fandom so I'm more than a little nervous, especially given the absurdly high quality of Terror fics I've read on here; you guys write beautifully and you do your research and I'm in awe.  Comments here are always lovely but I'm currently banging pots and pans about The Terror over on kiev4am.tumblr.com so if you'd rather say hello there that's fine too.
> 
> I gave a softer landing to a couple of mutineers - to misquote Francis, I hoped they might have made a different choice under different, less Hickey-influenced circumstances. I've also used the term 'Esquimaux' as I believe it's the term the characters would have used at the time; please feel free to tell me if you feel there's a better word to use in context.
> 
> The cheetah is a delightful detail from the biography of Fitzjames by William Battersby, which I haven't finished yet but is an excellent read so far.
> 
> Please, everybody go look at the [utterly breathtaking artwork](http://zehstern.tumblr.com/post/177796362449/cover-art-for-stories-yet-to-tell-by-kiev4am) that [zehstern](http://zehstern.tumblr.com) has made for this story. It's beautiful.
> 
> Also, [nuizlaziart](http://nuizlaziart.tumblr.com) drew [this incredibly lovely fanart](https://nuizlaziart.tumblr.com/post/178855985267/a-tiny-sketch-for-kiev4ams-fic-stories-yet-to). I am so _blown away_ that people have made fanart of this story *heart eyes*


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